John Henry Smith Part 14

Carter is a good-looking chap, and I think he knows it. The fond mammas here in the club consider him a catch. I am not exactly a pauper myself, but I may be if this N. O. & G. deal goes against me.

I wonder how it would seem to be poor? I wonder if Miss Harding would care to play golf with me if she knew I had to work for a living? I wonder what I would work at?

I dreamed last night that N.O. & G. stock went down and down until it was worth less than nothing, and that I had lost every dollar in the world and owed several millions.

It was an awful dream. I was in jail for a time, and when they let me out I did not have the car fare to get back to Woodvale. I walked all the way, and was chased by dogs. When I got here, the steward presented my bill, which amounted to several hundred dollars. I told him I could not pay it, and he marked my name off the members.h.i.+p list. I met Carter and several others and they would not speak to me. I was dying from hunger, and looked longingly at the remnants of a steak left by Chilvers, but one of the servants told me to move on.

Then the scene changed, as things move in dreams, and I was at work on Bishop's farm. I was cutting and shocking corn, and the boss of the hired help swore because I was so slow. My hands were bleeding from scratches where the sharp edges of the bayonet-like blades had cut them, and I was so hungry and tired that I was ready to lie down and die. My wages were fifteen dollars a month, and every cent of it had been levied against by my Wall Street creditors. Not until I was seventy years old would any of the money I earned be coming to me. The other hired men looked on me as a weakling, and laughed at the torn golf suit in which I was clothed.

I was happy when I awoke and realised it was only a nightmare.

I raised the curtain so as to let in the cool air. The links were bathed in a flood of moonlight. Half a mile away were Bishop's cornfields in which the dreamland fiends had tortured me. It was not yet midnight, and down the lane I made out the forms of Chilvers, Marshall, Lawson, and other nighthawks. Chilvers was singing, the others coming in the chorus of the last line, drawing it out to the full length and strength of a parody of the old negro song:

"Where, oh where are the long, long drivers?

Where, oh where are the long, long drivers?; Where, oh where are the long, long drivers?

'Way down yander in the corn field."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The dream]

ENTRY NO. X

THE TWO GLADIATORS

There was little doing in N.O. & G. stock on Monday or Tuesday. It dropped off a point and then recovered. I told my brokers to pick up 10,000 shares at or below 65. I am confident it will strike that figure before the end of the week.

It was nearly five o'clock before we started up the lane toward Bishop's. We were delayed half an hour waiting for Marshall, but, knowing his weakness, we fixed the time of departure half an hour sooner than necessary.

If Marshall's hope for eternal salvation depended on applying at the pearly gates at a specified time, he would spend eternity in the other place on account of being thirty minutes late. Knowing this to be his habit, we always provide against it. If the club house ever catches on fire, we shall lose Marshall, and he is a splendid good fellow.

Marshall's wife informs me it took him thirty weeks to propose after he had made up his mind to do so, and that after the wedding day was set it was necessary to postpone the ceremony thirty days in order to permit him to attend to some trifling business affairs. We call him "Thirty"

Marshall, and it takes him thirty seconds to smile in appreciation of the jest. But he plays a good game of golf, with at least four deliberate practise swings before each stroke at the ball.

Chilvers wanted to have a team hitched up and ride over in the club bus.

He said it tired him to walk. We vetoed that proposition, and Chilvers stopped twice to rest on the half-mile jaunt to Bishop's.

Chilvers thinks nothing of playing twice around Woodvale, a distance of not less than ten miles, but when in the city he takes a cab or a street car when compelled to go a few blocks. When there is no ball ahead of him he is the most fatigued man of my acquaintance, but he can stride over golf links from daybreak until it is so dark you cannot see the ball, and quit as fresh as when he started. There are others like Chilvers.

I walked with Mrs. Harding. I had a good chance to walk with Miss Harding, but wished to show Carter that it was a matter of indifference to me. More than that, it occurred to me it was not a bad plan to become better acquainted with Mrs. Harding.

The man who gets Mrs. Harding for a mother-in-law will be fortunate.

None of the thrusts and jibes of the alleged funny men will apply to her as a mother-in-law.

One would not readily identify Mrs. Harding as the wife of a famous railway magnate. Wealth certainly has not turned her motherly head. Of course, she is a little woman. Huge men such as Harding invariably select dolls of women for helpmates. She is round, smiling, pretty, and thoughtful, and I like her immensely.

We were approaching the Bishop place. The orchard trees were covered with fruit. Some of the tomatoes showed the red of their fat cheeks through the green of their foliage. Miss Lawrence had started with LaHume, but under some pretext left him and was with Carter and Miss Harding, and I doubt if Carter was pleased with that evidence of his popularity. LaHume walked with Miss Ross and talked and laughed, but I could see he was angry.

It suddenly occurred to me that Miss Lawrence would probably meet Bishop's hired man, Wallace, and I presume LaHume was thinking of the same thing. It was apparent they had quarrelled over something.

Marshall and Chilvers were together, their wives trailing on behind, as usual. The way these two married men neglect these lovely women makes me angry every time I am out with them, but the ladies do not seem to care, and I presume it is none of my business.

Harding walked with everybody, and was happy as a lark. He threw stones at a telegraph pole, and was in ecstasy when a lucky shot s.h.i.+vered one of the gla.s.s insulators.

"How was that for a shot, mother?" he shouted, as the gla.s.s came flying down. "Hav'n't hit one of those since I was fourteen years old. Say, I wish I was fourteen years old now, barefooted, and sitting on the bank of that creek catching s.h.i.+ners."

"I wouldn't throw any more stones, Robert," Mrs. Harding said, laying her hand on his arm and looking up to his happy face. "The last time you threw stones you were lame for a week, and I had to rub you with arnica."

"But think of the fun I had," he said, and then he went back and told Marshall and Chilvers some yarn which must have been very amusing from the way they laughed.

I had been praising the beauties of the country around Woodmere, and asked Mrs. Harding how she liked the club house, and if she were enjoying her summer there.

"I would enjoy it much better," she said, "if I did not know that I should be home."

"I presume you feel that you are neglecting your social duties," I ventured.

"Social fiddlesticks," she laughed. "I should be home canning tomatoes and putting up fruit. We won't have a thing in the house fit to eat all next winter."

"But the servants," I began. "The servants----"

"If you knew as much about housekeeping as you do about golf," she said, "you would know that servants do not know how to preserve fruit. Last year I put up more than two hundred cans, and unless I can drag Mr.

Harding away from here, it will be too late for everything except pears and quinces, and he does not care much for either."

Think of the wife of a multi-millionaire standing over a hot kitchen fire and preserving tomatoes, cherries, grapes, jams, jells, and all that kind of thing! I did not exactly know how to sympathise with her.

"It is nice down here," she said, after a pause, "but there's nothing to do."

"The drives are splendid," I said, "and I'm sure you would become interested in golf or tennis if you took them up."

"I mean that there's no work to do," she said. "I nearly had a row with my husband before he would let me darn his socks. He does not know it, but I keep the maid out of our rooms so that I can do the work myself.

It's awful to sit around all day with nothing to do but read and do fancy work. I hate fancy work. If you have any socks which need darning, Mr. Smith, I wish you would let me have them."

We both laughed, but she was in earnest and made me promise I would turn over to her any socks which show signs of wear. I shall keep them as a memento.

That is the kind of a woman I should like for a mother-in-law.

And the more I see of Mr. Harding the better I like him. But I must record the many things which happened that afternoon and evening at Bishop's.

The fine old farmhouse is ideally located on a rising slope of ground.

It is surrounded with the most beautiful grove of horse-chestnut trees in this section of the country.

The house is more than a hundred years old, and Bishop has the sense not to attempt an improvement in its exterior architecture. When a boy I spent most of my spare time in and around the Bishop house. Joe Bishop and I were chums, but when I went away to college, Joe wandered out West, and it is years since I have seen him. I have often thought that I must have been an awful source of bother to the Bishops, but they never seemed to mind it much. All of their children are grown up and married, but here the old folks are, working away as hard as when I was a child.

I suppose James Bishop is about Mr. Harding's age, somewhere between fifty and fifty-five. He in no way resembles the farmer of the cartoons.

He wears a stubby moustache, and looks more the prosperous horseman than the typical farmer. He is a big man, a trifle taller than Mr. Harding, but not so broad of shoulder. Either of them would tip the beam at 230 pounds.